


Stay With Me

by IneffableToreshi



Series: Stay & Be [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale Loves Crowley's Eyes (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley in Love (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Good Omens Lockdown, Idiots in Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Protective Crowley, Quarantine, ineffable husbands, like the tiniest bit of angst, lockdown - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:14:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23991382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IneffableToreshi/pseuds/IneffableToreshi
Summary: Aziraphale thinks himself a coward for discouraging Crowley from coming to the bookshop to Lockdown with him and rethinks the decision.(Takes place after the events of the 30th Anniversary Good Omens Lockdown video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quSXoj8Kob0)
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Stay & Be [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1924075
Comments: 36
Kudos: 253





	Stay With Me

**Author's Note:**

> Yep. I know. But I just couldn't bloody resist. The 30th anniversary vid killed me and I'll take any excuse to write sweet love confessions for my bois. 
> 
> I don't know why I'm even bothering to ask, but if anyone is interested in a smutty follow-up chapter, I'll probably have one half-written by the time you let me know about it. lol
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> \---
> 
> Lovely readers; if you enjoy my fan-fiction and want to see more of what I do, you can check out my author blog at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com, where you'll find links to my social media, my original work, and more. Check it out and feel free to say hello!

“Good night, angel.”

His voice was so soft, so tender, so...disappointed, that Aziraphale nearly said something.  _ I’ve changed my mind _ , he thought.  _ I don’t want you to go to sleep alone in that empty flat… I want you here. I want you with me. I want us to be together… _

But before his foolish mouth could form the words he was standing there with the phone receiver to his ear, listening to the accusatory bleat of the dial tone, mocking him. 

The receiver went back to its cradle and the angel stood next to his desk, fingers idly tracing patterns on the hardwood. 

_ Why on Earth did you say that?  _ he thought with a heavy sigh.  _ Breaking all the rules? Out of the question? You’d literally  _ just  _ questioned why he wasn’t out making mischief. What in the world was that ridiculous about-face all about? _

“You panicked,” he said aloud. His voice sounded so loud in the dreadfully quiet, lonely shop. “You panicked in the face of possibly being allowed what you want more than anything, just like you always do.” He carelessly, and uncharacteristically, swept a few sheets of paper - shipment receipts, mostly - off his desk with a huff. “ _ Foolish  _ angel.”

He stomped off toward the kitchen when a timer began to trill, significantly less excited about the batch of triple-fudge brownies than he’d been earlier. 

“This is stupid,” the angel growled at himself while dropping the tray of brownies on the top of the oven. They were perfectly baked and looked truly scrumptious, but Aziraphale glared at them as though they’d personally slighted him. “You should just call him back. Tell him he’s perfectly welcome to come over. Tell him you’ve rather missed him and would be so happy for his company. Tell him you  _ want  _ him here with you during these difficult times. Tell him-”

His fingers had curled rather tightly around the edge of the counter, which was making a distressing creaking noise. 

Aziraphale sighed. The truth was that there was something much more important that he wanted to tell the demon. Something he’d been longing to tell him for centuries, in fact. Something he’d wanted to say after they’d survived the End of the World and their respective trials from Heaven and Hell. Something he’d been too much of a coward to say because he was terrified - now that they were both free - that it would change something between them, that Crowley wouldn’t say it  _ back _ , that he’d…

“Stupid,” the angel hissed at himself again. “Stupid and cowardly and- And-” He looked around the shop at the truly astounding quantity of baked goods covering nearly every surface that hadn’t already been laden with books. “And lonely…”

He was back at the phone again before he could talk himself out of it, Crowley’s number dialled, the line ringing, his heart hammering away in his throat. 

“I changed my mind,” he recited to himself as the tone buzzed through the receiver. “I think it would be a wonderful idea for us to withstand this isolation together. After all, no one is watching anymore. We can be… We can be  _ together- _ ”

The line clicked, but before Aziraphale could rewind and restart his speech a familiar voice drawled out from a pre-recorded message: “You know what to do. Do it with style.”

If anyone had been watching they would have seen how the angel visibly deflated. “Oh…” he said as he slowly placed the receiver back in the cradle. “Oh...you must already be asleep then…”

It stung worse than it probably should have. It would only be a month or two, after all. They’d spent  _ centuries  _ apart over the course of their...relationship. A couple of months would be nothing at all, really. A drop in the bucket. Entirely survivable. 

And yet… Somehow the thought that Crowley had simply rolled over and gone to sleep immediately after their conversation… It stung. Even if it would have technically been his own damn fault for telling the demon that he couldn’t come. 

“ _ Foolish angel _ ,” he groused at himself. “Foolish, idiotic, pathetic,  _ cowardly _ excuse of an angel-”

“You forgot fussy.”

Aziraphale’s heart leapt into his throat as he turned to the voice and found a fully awake and fully  _ present  _ demon gazing fondly at him from across the room. 

He looked so lovely, standing there, one shoulder against the shelf, the opposite hip kicked out in a way that suggested it wasn’t even properly attached to the rest of him. His glasses had slipped down his nose, giving Aziraphale a view of those beautiful golden eyes, and there was a handle clutched in his hand...a handle that was attached to a black leather luggage bag. 

He’d looked so effortlessly suave and confident when he first appeared, but at Aziraphale’s wide-eyed surprise the demon radiated an underlying wave of anxiety. 

“Figured, you know-” He started, cleared his throat, started again. “Figured it’s rather my  _ job _ to break the rules, after all. And besides,” he added quickly, releasing the luggage handle to wiggle his fingers in the air. “Little demonic miracle...no one saw me out, promise.” He shuffled his feet a bit, growing visibly more flustered by the second, and reached up to press his glasses more firmly up to his face to hide his eyes. “‘Course, if you don’t want me here, I can just-”

Aziraphale was in front of Crowley before he even realized he’d moved, well-manicured fingers wrapped in a desperate death-grip around the demon’s wrist. “No!” he exclaimed. When Crowley’s eyebrows rose almost comically far above his glasses, the angel took a deep breath and repeated himself, much more quietly. “No. No, my dear, I-” He swallowed hard and forced himself to face those blasted glasses with a steady gaze. “I’m actually...rather glad that you’re here. Please do stay.”

Crowley’s eyebrows stayed stubbornly where they were, even as his Adam’s apple bobbed in line with his sudden fluster. “Oh,” he managed, but just barely. “Kay.”

Aziraphale felt the panicked tension melt from his body, only for the nervous variety to take up residence in the newly-vacated space. He quickly pulled his hand back, took a few steps away, and plastered what he hoped was a convincingly calm smile on his face. “I...I actually called you back, you know,” he admitted. “To tell you I’d changed my mind, you see.”

For a moment it almost seemed like Crowley hadn’t heard him, but finally the demon gave a single little nod of his head and lifted a hand in the direction of the angel’s desk-phone. “Is that what all that was all about?”

Aziraphale couldn’t fight back the flush that rose to his cheeks. How much precisely had Crowley heard? Without that information the angel couldn’t do much more than lick his lips and nod. 

Crowley returned the nod, his hand dropping back to his side. “By the by, angel,” he said slowly, fingers fidgeting against his thigh, “I don’t think you’re foolish. Or idiotic. Or pathetic.” He paused just long enough to let a tiny twitch of a smile play across his lips. “ _ Definitely _ not cowardly. I think you might be the bravest being I’ve ever known, honestly.”

The anxious laugh that came from Aziraphale was thick with disbelief. His hands found one another in a wringing motion, quite despite a lack of instruction from his brain to do so. “Oh, please don’t tease me, my dear,” he huffed as his cheeks grew pinker. “I’m hardly brave. I’m a complete mess of a thing and I-”

Suddenly Crowley was right there in front of him, bare inches between them, glasses removed in a single graceful motion, and lovely golden orbs gazing intently into Aziraphale’s surprised blue eyes. 

“ _ Never _ ,” the demon said in a firm, but surprisingly gentle, tone, “speak poorly to me about my angel.”

The sharp intake of breath went right to Aziraphale’s head, making him feel light and a little dizzy. “ _ Your _ angel,” he reiterated, and it wasn’t a question. 

_ Oh to Hell and back with it.  _

He moved before he could overthink it any further. His fingers somehow found their way to the lapels of Crowley’s jacket without his conscious input, and in the following half-a-heartbeat his lips were on the demon’s. It was soft, chaste, a barely-there kiss like a breath of warm Spring air, but there was a spark as well, a heat passing between them

When he drew back, just far enough to gauge Crowley’s reaction, he found the demon gazing at him, his serpent eyes wide, pupils blown. It was a look not of  _ shock _ , precisely, but of something more like awe. 

“I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while now, my dearest,” Aziraphale said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “But I was always too afraid of...everything. Now, however-” He paused to swallow, to wet his lips a little with his tongue. “Oh Crowley, if you think I’m brave then I shall do my best to be so, for you.” With one last pause to take a breath and ensure he was meeting Crowley’s gaze unfalteringly, the angel said, “I love you, my dearest, my darling Crowley. I’ve loved you for so very, very long.”

There was a sound from the demon then - a sound neither of them had ever heard come from those lips before - and later Aziraphale would swear on his immortal soul never to tell another living being what he had heard that day. 

Crowley  _ mewled _ . A breath later his arms were around Aziraphale’s body, pulling him close so that he could bury his face into the angel’s shoulder. He made another sound, one that sounded like words, but they were muffled between the angel’s clothes and the sob that was doing its best to bubble up from the demon’s throat. 

Aziraphale worked his own arms around his demon’s body and rubbed wide, firm circles against the other’s back. “I didn’t quite catch that, dearest,” he chuckled, not unkindly.

Crowley shifted, but only just barely enough to free his lips from the layers of cotton and tartan. “Love you too, angel,” he repeated, voice cracking sweetly. “Always.  _ Forever _ . If you’ll have me.”

Aziraphale had never felt quite so wonderfully, perfectly, blissfully  _ warm  _ in all his long existence. His fingers halted in their patterning of the demon’s back in order to draw him nearer, tighter, needing them to be as close as physically possible in this moment. 

“Forever, my love,” he promised. “Stay with me forever.”

**Author's Note:**

> Lovely readers; if you enjoy my fan-fiction and want to see more of what I do, you can check out my author blog at http://traceytobin.wordpress.com, where you'll find links to my social media, my original work, and more. Check it out and feel free to say hello!


End file.
